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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/c...for_chocolate_1

 

Now the reason I put this out is to gauge reaction, as I have recently learned the truth in the matter from another news source, but this type of news article is a typical first one out with only half the story.

Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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I know that other companies have equally harsh rulings. At least I know that, for example, an electronic manufacturer was dumping the boards, that were not working, twice a week with a truck to a garbage press. Of course, even though the boards were not working, there was still much electronic parts of it on there, that still worked, so this was always a great oportunity for geeks. The truck driver was not allowed to take, or much worse, sell such parts, but of course they did. Reason was, that, even though this was considered garbage by the company, it had to be destroyed for tax reasons, and if the driver was caught selling it, then the company could get heavily fined by the tax collectors for holding back taxes.

This story could have a similar background, even though it sounds pretty harsh. If the father really wanted to give this chocolate to his kids for christmas, then he must be pretty poor, otherwise he sure wouldn't have taken it from the garbage. At least this is the impression that the article gives.

Gerhard

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/c...for_chocolate_1

 

Now the reason I put this out is to gauge reaction, as I have recently learned the truth in the matter from another news source, but this type of news article is a typical first one out with only half the story.

 

I wish the mainstream news was as quick to portray the myriad other forms of repression and coersion that workers have to undergo in their jobsites rather than a tear jerker story of some poor dude getting fired for taking trashed candy during Christmas. Im not surprised the company did that, and it may even have good reasons vis a vis the things that sparhawk mentioned. (Nevertheless, fuck em.)

 

Why arent we inundated with weekly stories of maimings and even deaths in the meat packing industry? Or the fact that Wal-Mart workers are so poorly paid that many qualify for government benefits programs here in the U.S.? What about the factories here in the States where you cannot take a piss break, thats right, you piss in a bucket at your station? These don't have the sex appeal that a scrooge story does for one thing and they certainly arent the stories/images that the people who decide what you get to read and view care to broadcast.

 

So whats the other half of the story?

Edited by Maximius
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Why arent we inundated with weekly stories of maimings and even deaths in the meat packing industry? ... (etc.)

Well the kind of things that happen all the time don't make good news. This "scrooge" type thing is just that - something that sounds like the whole scrooge thing come to life, makes good news.

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I wish the mainstream news was as quick to portray the myriad other forms of repression and coersion that workers have to undergo in their jobsites rather than a tear jerker story of some poor dude getting fired for taking trashed candy during Christmas. Im not surprised the company did that, and it may even have good reasons vis a vis the things that sparhawk mentioned. (Nevertheless, fuck em.)

 

Why arent we inundated with weekly stories of maimings and even deaths in the meat packing industry? Or the fact that Wal-Mart workers are so poorly paid that many qualify for government benefits programs here in the U.S.? What about the factories here in the States where you cannot take a piss break, thats right, you piss in a bucket at your station? These don't have the sex appeal that a scrooge story does for one thing and they certainly arent the stories/images that the people who decide what you get to read and view care to broadcast.

 

So whats the other half of the story?

 

 

And according to some articles I read a while back, most domestic US airline pilots are paid so poorly they qualify for government benifits. Never mind terrorism, watch out for the pilot who barely earns enought to feed himself, and takes drugs to keep him/herself awake for the extra flights they need to take to make ends meat. I'm not sure how many domestic flights result in accidents in the US, but I'll hazard a guess that they are a lot more frequent than in countries where pilots are paid a decent salary.

 

And thanks to our brilliant government, Australians can now enjoy the wonderful American industrial relations system where workers are paid as little as employers can get away with, with as few benefits as absolutely necessary, and the country becomes a dog eat dog place hell bent on shareholder profits as the only thing of value.

 

The only way people can take back power in this world is to buy as many shares as they can afford in as many companies as they can manage - especially the companies they work for - and use their vote as shareholders to force the company to behave itself in a decent manner, and protect their own jobs.

 

The way things are going, the only semblence of democracy in the future will be a shareholder vote in a company you have an interest in.

 

 

And there is a ridiculous amount of waste in society due to stupid tax laws and regulations that require perfectly good things that would be of great value to someone to be destroyed. Insane is the word.

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Well the kind of things that happen all the time don't make good news. This "scrooge" type thing is just that - something that sounds like the whole scrooge thing come to life, makes good news.

 

 

But news isnt supposed to be entertainment, heart warming/chilling stories to spice up life. Life is spicy enough and information is what is needed. But its more than that too. The lack of real news, at least here in the States, is a deliberate effort to misinform the public.

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Governments of a fascist bent generally like to keep the populace as uninformed, misinformed and disinformed as possible, as information is power, and if it is kept from the people, the people have no power to criticise the actions of their governments.

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Governments of a fascist bent generally like to keep the populace as uninformed, misinformed and disinformed as possible, as information is power, and if it is kept from the people, the people have no power to criticise the actions of their governments.

 

I would suggest that governments in general like to do such things. Every democracy I know of employs the same tactics. And don't forget the complicity of the media owners and bureaucrats, they are cut from a very similar type of cloth. Occasionally you see fractures, squabbles peek through and much more rarely the media takes off its gloves but for the most part these two elite sectors of a society are spooning in bed together

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But news isnt supposed to be entertainment, heart warming/chilling stories to spice up life.

Well it's not supposed to be, but it is. To the point where headlines are twisted around to sound more controversial than the story actually is.

 

Meh, I'm stating the obvious, you guys probably want to talk about something deep and meaningfull. I'll quit.

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And thanks to our brilliant government, Australians can now enjoy the wonderful American industrial relations system where workers are paid as little as employers can get away with, with as few benefits as absolutely necessary, and the country becomes a dog eat dog place hell bent on shareholder profits as the only thing of value.

 

It's not so much different here in Germany. Maybe not so extreme, but it's going in that direction. And now that CDU/CSU came to power here, with Mrs. Merkel as the Chancelor, it will most likely get worse, because they always were there to help richer people get more rich.

 

I don't know wether I seriously want this or wether it is just a nostalgic hunch, but recently I thought how live would be like, if you would join the Amish people. No industry, no shareholders, etc. The thing that holds me back most, is the strict adherence to the bible, though, and also that not even music is allowed. I think I could live such a live, and I think I could even enjoy it (don't know for sure until I tried it though), but these two reasons are pretty strong, especially the believe-in-god bit.

Gerhard

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But news isnt supposed to be entertainment, heart warming/chilling stories to spice up life. Life is spicy enough and information is what is needed. But its more than that too. The lack of real news, at least here in the States, is a deliberate effort to misinform the public.

 

I was working once on a project for APA, which is the Autrian Press Agency. We were redisgning there news system, so that journalists could easier research news. It was quite interesting, because while I worked on this project I had access to ALL the news that came in, because they are collected in this database. At this time, I really realized how much information is there, and what crap we get fed each day. It's depressing. Important or interesting news is usually always supressed in favour of a bloody car accident, or the guy who killed his wife because she cheated on him.

 

Some time later I joined a similar project but with military news. That was even more intersting. :) Even though I didn't have access to really classified material, it was still more then what you get in the official news agency as well.

Gerhard

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I have heard rumours that Tony Blair wants to "reform labour laws" in Europe, which I can only imagine means removing protections for employees and turning Europeans into a load of 80-hour-a-week wage slaves like they have in America.

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Anybody who works less is a lazy bastard and has no right to live in the 'community'.

 

You know, for all that 'Hitler may never happen again.' it's amazing how hard goverments work to make it come around again. But of course, saying something like this is not opportune, because Hitler must be condemned by all means and any comparison, which is not related to Jew murdering means you are a Nazi yourself and have to be locked up. Saying that there are many parallels in current goverments and how Hitler came to power before he had enough power to make his plan come true is not politically correct.

Gerhard

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Well it's not supposed to be, but it is. To the point where headlines are twisted around to sound more controversial than the story actually is.

 

Meh, I'm stating the obvious, you guys probably want to talk about something deep and meaningfull. I'll quit.

 

Please dont quit, I value your questions and observations. Any discussion is improved by the addition of voices that are new to a topic. I'd like to suggest some books:

 

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman, documents the slant in U.S. media towards elite government points of view, perhaps the definitive argument about the unobjectivity of the media classes.

 

 

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The stolen U.S. elections and how the media played a willing role.

 

The Culture of Fear: Barry Glassner, how the media (and others) use misinformation to generate fear and acquiesence from the public.

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The Culture of Fear: Barry Glassner, how the media (and others) use misinformation to generate fear and acquiesence from the public.

 

That should be pretty obvious to anybody who can use that chunk sitting on his shoulders. But in fact it is really annoying in many instances, how obvious medias are doing this, and nobody erally cares or even goes along with it.

I was reading a few days ago a book that I borrowed from my daughter. She is nine, and the book was suitable for her age, but it was still intersting enough to give me a good read. The book was about a boy who discovered a psyhich talent and then helps to free some gilr that was captured for some reason. Anyway, while I read this book, there was a dialog between this boy and a close friend that he told about his discoverie. During this dialog one of the boys said to the others something like "But what if he is a terrorist?" This really jarred me and broke my immersion, because NEVER have I encountered a talk between 10 year old boys talking about terrorists. When I read this I immediately thought that this book was originally written by a UK or at least an US author, and in fact it was. The problem that I had with this dialog was that it felt totally contrieved, not something two boys would actually talk about, and is if this word was there not to give an accurate description of two boys talking to each others, but to make this word even more popular so that even kids can start to use it as a term of fear.

The usage of 'terrorism' in the medias in the last year was so obvious that you couldn't help but notice it. Either I became more senstive of it, or they really overdid it this time. I think I heard news where almost every second word was 'terorrist' or related to it just to create more fear and keep it in the minds.

Currently it has subsided now a little, but it is still overused. I got the impression, that nowadays criminals are no longer called criminals, but rather terrorists just in case. Of course the medias never say it flat out, it usually is a 'suspected terrorist'.

Gerhard

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I have heard rumours that Tony Blair wants to "reform labour laws" in Europe, which I can only imagine means removing protections for employees and turning Europeans into a load of 80-hour-a-week wage slaves like they have in America.

 

U.S. corporate culture is spreading like a cancer around the world. Wealthy elites want more for less, that is always their desire, they are not content raping the retirement funds and social nets of U.S. ers they want the rest of the cake too. Ms. Merkel and Co. are their vanguard in Germany, Blair in Britain, Bertoloni in Italy, whoever the hell in Austrailia. This is why I look to South America with some hope, Bolivia just elected its first indigenous Indian president, a number of countries are leaning left, and the giant to the North is too distracted at the moment to deal with them as it would like to. Viva Chavez! Viva Castro! Forward the Revolution!

 

I hear what you are saying about the AMish, spar, but their lifestyle is a bit too austere. I lived next door to them for a couple of years and its not as idyllic as people may think. The independence is attractive I agree but I cannot live without some modern amenities.

 

My personal dream is to purchase a small cabin (preferably in Canada next door to Vadrosaul so I can blast baroque music at 4 A.M.) with a decent patch of land and access to a clean body of water. Then I start a little farming, perhaps some aquaculture, grow a little bud :), spend my days doing work thats MY work, making food that nourishes me not some parasite in an expensive suit. The fiancee works for a horrible corporate magazine and she is becoming more and more attracted to this idea as the months go by.

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The sad truth is that the majority of individuals do not have the time or wherewithal to examine these things in great detail. They are not helpless or complete idiots, although some of them certainly are, but they are too deeply sunk into the warp and weft of their immediate worlds to connect the dots to the Nth degree as we may try to do. Human beings create their realities to a large degree, its not THE ultimate reality whatever that may be but its a little pocket of perceptions they inhabit. If you can play a role in shaping that pocket, you will shape the individual intimately. This is what the media does, its a constant pressure moulding the perceptions of people.

 

This doesnt mean it cannot be combatted but its tough as hell. A story comes to mind, an old commie who writes on another list I lurk on told it. He was organizing out in the Mid West U.S. back in the 60s, in a mining town where the lead levels in the local water supply were so high that the residents had blue stripes in their fingernails and teeth. When he and his comrades hit town and started to try and organize them, they were almost lynched. The townspeople told them to get out of town and mind their own business or they would be getting a hot lead enema. These people were DYING, their children were DYING, their town was DYING but they were fighting for the right to do exactly that. Because someone had told them that to organize was immoral, that there was no alternative to the reality they lived in, because they would rather die than be told by a stranger that they were dying.

 

A few years ago some friends and I were trying to get an anti-nuclear power group together to try and get the OYstercreek nuke plant in new jersey shut down. It never got off the ground but one thing stuck in my head. When the obsolete and insecure facility was up for relicensing, there was no interest from the public, the media barely covered it at all, there was no outcry. Its the oldest continuously operating plant in the U.S., maybe the world. And not a peep from anyone. A few weeks later, in New Jersey there was a protest at a public school where around 200 stick worshippers (Christians) gathered to protest because the school library had a book on witchcraft. A single kooky book gets 200 people on the streets but an aging nuclear reactor doesnt even rate a front page blurb. It was then that I started to dream about that cabin in the woods....

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(Hehe, I like that - stick worshippers :) )

 

It's not just a stick, it's one of the most gruesomely sadistic forms of torture and execution ever devised by man.

 

I'd rather be sent to a gas chamber than crucified, but if you wore a gas chamber around your neck you would probably be sent to a mental hospital.

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I hear what you are saying about the AMish, spar, but their lifestyle is a bit too austere. I lived next door to them for a couple of years and its not as idyllic as people may think. The independence is attractive I agree but I cannot live without some modern amenities.

 

According to what I read, they are using modern equipment, medical treatment and other stuff, only not on their own. So they do ride cars, but never themselve. If somebody gives them a ride, then they take it, and some people even made a business out of it. You are right that I don't know their live first-hand, and maybe there is some nostalgic twinkling when I think about it.

Gerhard

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According to what I read, they are using modern equipment, medical treatment and other stuff, only not on their own. So they do ride cars, but never themselve. If somebody gives them a ride, then they take it, and some people even made a business out of it. You are right that I don't know their live first-hand, and maybe there is some nostalgic twinkling when I think about it.

 

 

That is correct, in fact there are varying degrees of detachment from modernity. Some are old school hardcore never say die types who wouldnt touch a keyboard or a T.V. set with gloves on. Many still ride in horse and buggy, but they will travel in vehicles, they are in high demand on construction sites around the East Coast because of their rock hard work ethics and masterful carpentry skills. Their barn raisings are truly marvelous, they swarm the site like ants and in a day or two "Poof!" a new barn is standing where an empty field once lay. The fact that they work wearing long sleeve shirts, long trousers, full skirts and blouses no matter what the heat makes you question some of their notions, though.

 

But their communities face many problems, the kids want to dye their hair and go to dance clubs with their more modernized friends, cocaine is a + BIG+ problem in their circles for parties but also because they can stay awake for three days work like devils make a ton of cash and then go home for a week. Like everyone else they are under tremendous external pressures from all around.

 

When I lived in AMish country, I would go jogging in the summer, often only wearing shorts. I would run by an Amish farmhouse everyday where three ladies were often on the front porch working cleaning vegetables or shelling peas or such. THey would run inside as I went by, eyes covered. Then one day, no ladies, only the patriarch, glaring at me with the righteous wrath of Bog in his eyes as my sweaty, gleaming torso stumbled by. I realized my shirtless run was probably generating a lot of problems in the house, so I switched routes. But it was a bit funny, the modern jogger meeting a morality from somewhere in the early 19th century. Probably make a good "New Yorker" cartoon or something.

Edited by Maximius
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No nukes? Man what are you, a hippie? Wickanism is much more modern, get with the times! It's not cool to be concerned about nuclear meltdowns anymore.

 

(Hehe, I like that - stick worshippers :) )

 

 

I had a Wiccan art teacher in high school, she was great as all weird teachers usually are. At least when real Wiccans worship sticks, they are celebrating the mysteries of living things, not carrying on a 2000 year old guilt trip. Im not referring to some dipshit who purchased "The Idiots Guide To Wicca" at BordersBooks and is now claiming to be a witch, I mean real Wiccans, the ones Ive met are pretty savvy folks. I appreciate the wonder they have for the natural world, as opposed to the Christian ethic of "God gave it to us to commodify, pollute, and turn into stripmalls"

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But their communities face many problems, the kids want to dye their hair and go to dance clubs with their more modernized friends, cocaine is a + BIG+ problem in their circles for parties but also because they can stay awake for three days work like devils make a ton of cash and then go home for a week. Like everyone else they are under tremendous external pressures from all around.

 

I can imagine that. I know that I might be able to live under such circumstances, but it would be my own choice. As for the kids, I can see that this would be a BIG problem, even though I think that their familly considerations are IMO a big bonus. Well, probably it depends. Maybe it is already to extreme a difference in relation to their surrounding, but the fact that family tradition seems to be very high I consider quite good. Actually this is one thing that I miss quite a lot, because I can see a lot of this deteroating over time with so many couples getting divorced and the kids often take the biggest blow from it. In cities there are almost no families anymore where the grandparents live under one roof with the children and their grandchildren, and I miss this a lot.

Gerhard

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I am getting to the point where modern civilisation is becoming so decadent, corrupt and so mindless that I often wonder if it wouldn't be better if a big asteroid did come and wipe the slate clean...

 

We have so much potential, but we squander so much of it with wasteful, self-destructive activities :(

 

Things tend to run in cycles though, and while a lot of western governments have swung quite far into ultra-conservative right wing ideologies, it will inevitably swing the other way eventually. That is the problem though - when it swings too far in one direction, it will then swing too far in the other direction. The job of engaged, thinking citizens os to dampen these oscillations driven by fear, false hope and extremist ideology and keep society travelling along a balanced path.

 

 

The USA has all the hallmarks of a civilisation in rapid decline - all of the things that went on in once great civilisations that were a precursor to their demise are now occuring in the USA and those nations that strive to emulate the USA are happening now.

 

The problem for the rich is, that their wealth depends on the continued mindless consumption of resources by the poor and middle class. The poorer these people get, the wider the gulf between the rich and the poor, the less consumption there will be, and the drip sustaining the wealthy will slowly dry up. Then come the violent revolutions, the civil wars, the riots, paranoia, fear, as the rich use their remaining power to violently repress the enslaved workers, and the poor react to their oppression by violently atacking the rich, burning down the mansions and blowing up luxury jets....

 

If thinking citizens don't sieze the reigns of society soon, we have all of that suffering to look forward to, and we face the collapse of civilisation. It has happened countless times before, so I guess it is human nature to do nothing until it is too late.

 

Anyone think we aren't doomed to another catastrophic civilisation collapse?

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I don't think that we are doomed in the sense that we are killing each other off. But I can easily imagine that some civil (or not so civil war) is not THAT far away either. In terms of historical timeframs, not in human lives. On the other hand, our advanced technology makes it much easier to control more people. Considering how much control the Nazi regime (or others) exerted with their, from now our point of view, limite technology, I wonder what current goverments can do already. Reading technical news on most news site seems to carry a single theme. Goverment X tries to impose more control by technology Y. I think there is not a single day where you can't read such news about plans, to install yet another technology that is purely designed to control even more people, and most of it is 'disguised' as to prevent terrorism or paedophilia.

Gerhard

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